


How the Day Sounds

by SinningVirtue



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Angel Dean Winchester, Hunter Castiel, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-06
Updated: 2013-04-06
Packaged: 2017-12-07 16:36:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/750677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinningVirtue/pseuds/SinningVirtue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel rises from hell on a Thursday, claws his way from the grave.<br/>He meets the angel the same night, an angel with green eyes and a southern twang and a name that sounds anything but angelic.<br/>He meets Dean on a Thursday.<br/>And it takes some time, but Castiel thinks he likes how this day sounds, now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How the Day Sounds

**Author's Note:**

> So I should be doing something else. Like schoolwork or work on the Sherlock fic I have open.  
> Instead this thing happened.  
> I really love role reversals, and I wanted to take my own stab at it-see what I could do.  
> I absolutely adore your comments, so please leave one when you finish up.  
> Thank you so much for reading!  
> -Han

Castiel Novak breaks the surface, dirt-caked fingers reaching for the sky--

 

he

 

breathes.

 

Demons hide behind his eyes, he can feel them shift and stretch in the new light. Hell fire and hound claws have built themselves homes inside his rib cage; they leave their fingerprints on his lungs.

 

He makes a noise, a half-formed prayer— _For thine is the kingdom—_ the whimper that ends the world. And he feels meat hooks and carving knives weigh heavy in his hands. Full-throated bird song dances on a soft wind, souls scream in languages he doesn’t know.

 

But the sky is blue, and he can breathe.

 

Xx

 

Castiel finds Joshua first; father in everything but blood, with hands roughed and worn by gardening and demon hunting both. Breathing life and taking it.

 

Joshua stares at him, eyes going milky with old age, and his brown skin lined with canyons and little sleep and grief that wears him thin and ragged at the bones. Joshua stares at him, mouth opening and closing like the words he needs are suddenly of a language he doesn’t understand.

 

And then he throws holy water in Castiel’s face.

 

It’s not much, but it’s home.

 

Xx

 

“ _What did you do?_ ” Castiel screams.

 

Gabriel sees a madness in his brother’s eyes; lost and wanting with the fear of four months below the brim of this earth, lost in death’s other kingdom. He walks alone now.

 

Strung out and left bleeding, Castiel’s made of dying stars and blown-out candles. There are just wisps of smoke and supernovas left. A falling star and a soft smell of ending.

 

“Nothing,” he whispers.

 

Gabriel did nothing.

 

Gabriel did nothing.

 

Nothing but pray and want and miss and fear and breathe and beg, tortured and twisted in the middle of a crossroads for _anyone_ to deal.

 

Gabriel did nothing.

 

Xx

 

The shadow falls between the wind howling its eternal vengeance to the sky and the shed lights bursting in small fireworks of stars.

 

The man the shadow makes is like nothing Castiel has ever seen.

 

He’s carved delicate and gentle from the wind and the ocean, fairies have taken to his skin and his eyes and given them a light Castiel cannot fathom.   

 

He’s the most beautiful man he’s ever seen.

 

He walks in fire, beneath the rain of sparks like he belongs there; walks cocky and easy, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of a worn leather jacket. He doesn’t smile, but a smirk hovers at the corners of his lips, and there’s a sadness that lingers around the lines of his eyes. And that’s something Castiel understands.

 

“Who are you?” he asks, tightening his grip on his gun. Joshua straightens beside him, a grim, stern twist to the older man’s mouth that’s never looked quite right.

 

The man grins, and it looks feral and alien.

 

“I’m the one who hauled your ass out of the pit.”

 

Xx

 

“Name’s Dean. I’m an Angel of the Lord.”

 

Something in Castiel breaks, something else tries to mend.

 

“There’s no such thing,” he whispers. “I would’ve--”

 

Dean’s eyes seem to refract inward, and Castiel doesn’t think he’s ever seen eyes that expressive before. He can see the moment Dean understands what he would have said, what he couldn’t say.

 

How many times had the night listened to Castiel, desperate and broken, as he prayed? How many wounds had been carved into his voice, asking for any God alive to help him?

 

Lightning flashes, shadows move when they shouldn’t and black wings unfurl, manifest themselves. They are dangerous looking, huge and sleek, trying to find space enough to exist. The wind ruffles them and the crack of lightning makes them seem ghostly, not quite there but real.  

 

Castiel can feel himself falling to his knees.

 

“Angel,” he whispers, trying out the word on his tongue.

 

And he thinks about Gabriel, dead and broken in his arms. He thinks about crossroads and hellhounds. He thinks about demons, about yellow eyes and the blood-stained mouths of children. He thinks about his mother, her soft hands and softer voice when she sang him Bob Dylan music. He thinks about his father, his roughed palms and hard, unfeeling eyes, the piece of him that died the day his mother did.

 

He thinks about hell, about torture and the rack, and what it felt like to get off of it.

 

To put someone else on.

 

“Angel,” he repeats.

 

Dean puts a hand on his shoulder, and it’s anchoring, it’s real.

 

“What’s wrong?” he asks, his voice soft and gentle. Green eyes search out blue, and Castiel feels like he’s being stripped to the soul. “You don’t think you deserve to be saved.”

 

His mouth works, but no sound escapes it. If it did, Castiel thinks his words might have formed a prayer.

 

“Why?” he asks, and his voice breaks.

 

The hand on his shoulder tightens, and Castiel can feel an inhuman strength resting just behind the grip.

 

“Because God commanded it.”

 

Xx

 

There are ghosts, memories, whispers with vacant eyes and black mouths. They rise and swarm a garden and a safe haven, and their faces are familiar. Ashen and bloodied and caked with grave-dirt and scorch marks, they witness the hunters. They witness for a jury of open sky and spring flowers coaxed into bloom. And then they sentence, wrap their corporeal hands around necks and squeeze for all the lives that were not saved.

 

Because there are people Castiel could not save.

 

He leans against the kitchen cabinets, his head in his hands.

 

Gabriel sleeps off the nightmares on the couch. He’ll wake in two hours, eyes wide and chest heaving, searching for a brother he’s sure isn’t there. And Castiel will sit quietly by his side and smooth back his hair, and press the words of a childhood prayer into the spaces between them. What their mother used to whisper when Gabriel was only a few weeks old.

 

Before the fire.

 

Before everything.

 

They damned him, he thinks, as if he was not already damned. As if he did not already taste hellfire on his tongue and damnation in his bones. As if he had not already walked chains and bone saws and butcher-shop-chambers. As if he had not felt the rack beneath his hands.

 

There’s a rustle of wings, and then Dean is there, leaning casually with his arms crossed against the counter.

 

“Okay?” he asks gruffly, and Castiel can feel those eyes on him, tracing every hidden contour of his soul.

 

“Where were you?” Castiel demands, jerking his hands away from his face to glare back at the angel.

 

Dean looks stoic, his face shorn from a tan marble, emotionless. Unforgiving.

 

“I had other responsibilities.”

 

“ _Other_ —Dean. We are being torn apart,” he spits. He can still see the bodies, hunters ripped vicious and deep by their own guilt and grief. “What could possibly be so important that you couldn’t stop this?”

 

Dean’s mouth twists, a sharp snarl curls his lips and for a moment, Castiel is afraid.

 

“Lucifer is rising,” he says, a quiet cruelty hovering in his voice. “The rising of the witnesses was only the first of sixty-six seals your old pal Lilith’s breaking like fine china. Six of my brothers died this week. _Six._ Trying to protect _your_ world, _your_ family. You tell me what was so important,” Dean hisses, teeth bared.

 

The pain behind his eyes is huge and bottomless, swimming with all the white-strength of lightning and grace and the stars. And Castiel thinks family might mean more to this angel than it does to anyone alive. The silence between them spreads and runs loose and free down their bodies.

 

“I’m not here to hover behind you to wipe your ass, Castiel,” the angel whispers, low and dangerous. “Don’t think you own me. I don’t belong to anybody.”

 

Xx

 

“What kind of a name is Dean anyway, for an angel?” Castiel asks, brow raised.

 

“What kind of a name is Castiel, for a human?” Dean counters, mimicking his expression.

 

Xx

 

“What’s that?” Dean asks, soft southern twang settling easy on Castiel’s senses.

 

“Cheeseburger,” he mutters around a bite.

 

The angel stretches across his motel bed, turning the remote over and over in his hands like it might reveal is secrets. He tries to look like he’s not eyeing Castiel’s dinner.

 

“Would you like a bite?” he asks, rolling his eyes.

 

Dean’s there in less than a second, his nimble fingers plucking the burger from his hands. He takes a bit, huge and unafraid, and Castiel watches his eyes roll back into his head, his mouth drop open in a blissful moan.

 

“Oh my god, I’m in love.”

 

“Isn’t that blasphemous?” Castiel asks.

 

Dean grins, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’m not like other angels.”

 

Xx

 

It’s a quiet, dark night in a corn field in Kansas, when Dean tells him about Sam.

 

They’re lying on the roof of the Impala, which Dean has come to love like a child, and the stars are spread out before them.

 

“Family’s all we got, Cas,” he whispers, his hands mapping out the world in front of him. “We weren’t made for much, but to follow Dad’s orders, and to love our family. Think most of my brothers have forgotten that the family’s included humans for a while now; God made them and we were to love them as we loved each other. But we’ve always loved ourselves more.

 

“That makes us no better than Lucifer, really.”

 

The silence welled up inside them, and Castiel could feel the angel’s heat seeping into him.

 

“But it never mattered. There are so many of us, so many of you, it’s been figured that there would be some you’d love more than others. For Michael it was always Lucifer, that’s why it hurt so much to strike him down. Him and Gabriel and Lucifer were…unbreakable.

 

“The war changed all that,” he whispered. “When the dust settled, and Michael was the only one of the three left, we realized what playing favorites could get you.”

 

“And you…had a favorite?” Castiel asked carefully.

 

“Sam,” Dean answered with a nod. “He…I’ve never seen anyone so fascinated with humanity. He’d been in the field since the beginning. He watched empires rise and fall, and explored every secret piece of this world. And I was right there with him. How could I not be? He was naïve, young, adventurous. He could deny it all he wanted, but I knew the truth; he wanted to be human.”

 

He rubbed his hand over his jaw, and Castiel watched those eyes.

 

He’d wondered if all angels had eyes like that, that broadcasted a depth of emotion that mirrored oceans or supernovas. But no. Uriel and Zachariah had cold, sheltered gazes, flints of steel and ice that settled inhuman on him.

 

It was just Dean.

 

“That was dangerous. We both knew it.

 

“I protected him, but once Lucifer fell, we were encouraged to…take a step back from the ones we loved the most. God was our main priority, even though most of us had forgotten what he looked like. We had to love Him more than anything else. And I just couldn’t do that.”

 

“What happened?”

 

Castiel’s voice seems to jar Dean from his memories, pull him back away from war time and the early moments of humanity.

 

“I got him out,” he says simply. “He was my little brother, I had to help him. I could see how it was killing him to be there, follow orders like some toy soldier. I needed that; that was what I was. I couldn’t leave. But he had to. So I carved sigils into his chest, cut him out of angel radio, and sent him to Earth. I haven’t seen him since.” His voice drifts into nothingness, his hands falling to rest across his stomach.

 

Castiel sits up to look at him, to find where his eyes had gone, lost and impossibly far away.

 

“When the others found out…I didn’t know pain could be like that. Everywhere. In everything.”

 

“I don’t think we’re so different,” Castiel says, looking up at the stars. “Have you ever thought about finding him?”

 

“Sometimes,” he whispers, looking back at Castiel for the first time in what felt like hours. “But I doubt he even remembers me.”

 

“How could anyone forget an angel like you?”

 

Xx

 

Sometimes Castiel feels like Ginsburg, putting his queer shoulder to the wheel to watch it turn and turn. On and on again, and there’s an America or an heaven that’s abandoned them, left them empty-handed beggars longing for Time Magazine Bible verse acceptance. And the Lord said unto his people, ‘beware the Russians and the Chinamen and the ones who crawl from the depths of hell with their tails between their legs.’

 

And the Lord said unto Castiel ‘you are not a man, you are the twisted remnants of a soul that is no more.’

 

“You know, Cas,” Dean says, appearing from nothingness with the soft sigh of wings. “It’s okay to be afraid.”

 

No one has ever called him ‘Cas’ before.

 

“I don’t know how to fix this,” he whispers, in his dark, gravelly voice. His blue eyes trace the horizon.

 

Dean sat down quietly on the hood of the Impala, his callused hands traced her reverently, but his eyes stayed trained on Castiel.

 

He’d never seen a green like that, endless and golden. Faceted and fey-like.

 

“If I could change this…”

 

“I know.”

 

Xx

 

Dean throws himself bodily into humanity, revels in it, swallows it.

 

He becomes it.

 

One day Castiel looks up and Dean’s quoting Dr. Sexy, splayed out on his bed with his hands shoved deep into a bag of Doritos.

 

He looks like a human.

 

And then he laughs, head thrown back and eyes closed.

 

It’s the most beautiful thing Cas’ ever seen.

 

Xx

 

“Why’re you never here when Gabriel is?” Cas asks one night, cleaning his guns with military efficiency.

 

“Gabriel’s not my job,” he answers around a bite of cheeseburger.

 

“Oh, so you’re only here for your job?” he asks with a raised brow, eyes flicking to the Dr. Sexy MD rerun illuminating the room.

 

Dean shifts uncomfortably. “Okay, no. But what your brother does…that’s not. That’s not kosher upstairs.”

 

The television casts a blue glow over Dean’s body, stretched out and so human over the sheets.

 

Cas sighs, and the weight of the world rests heavy on his shoulders.

 

“What do I do?”

 

Dean swallows, bites his lip, and looks at Castiel like he might look at the full moon, or the horizon.

 

“Love him, stay with him, stop him,” he says, and it sounds like a prayer. “If you don’t, I’ll have to.”

 

Xx

 

The first time Castiel sees Dean kill someone, the light that takes the room sears itself behind his eyes and inside the cage of his ribs and brands him new and awed.

 

Dean moves like a dancer, shifting beneath blows and knives as if he was born for this, and presses two fingers neatly to a temple. In all, the grace is what gets Cas the most. Dean seems all brash and bull-headed, but he fights like wind, like water crashing against the shoreline.

 

Like a kiss, like flying.

 

Xx

 

“Gabe, it’s not like that,” Cas says quietly, staring out at the road ahead.

 

“Look, Castiel, I’m just saying that you two are getting awful comfortable. If it was anyone else I’d ask when the wedding was,” his brother answers, stuffing a twizzler into his mouth.

 

“Well it’s not anyone else. It’s me. And it’s an angel. So there’s nothing to worry about.”

 

“God, don’t be such a tight ass,” Gabriel whines, laughing around his candy. “No wonder it’s Michael that wants to ride you around.”

 

They look at each other, and the spaces between them seem gaping.

 

“Lord help Lucifer, then. He’s got no idea what he’s in for,” Castiel jokes, and they laugh, and it’s okay.

 

Xx

 

“ _I don’t know what to do. Please. I’m praying, do you hear me? I’m praying._ ”

 

The sound of wings, and then—

 

“Prayer’s good. Sign of faith,” Dean says softly, walking slowly towards the hunter.

 

“Does that mean you’ll help?” he asks, sounds like he’s begging.

 

But.

 

Lilith was coming.

 

If he must beg.

 

“There’s nothing I can do,” Dean says simply, his eyes sparkling gently.

 

“Nothing? Then what are you doing here? Throwing it in my face?” he asks, his hands running through his hair. “Well then screw this. Screw you. Screw your mission, and your god. I thought you’d understand, Dean, _this is my brother. He needs me._ ”

 

Dean stares out into the darkness, his face crumpled in on itself, those eyes closed off and reflecting streetlights.

 

“I need you to understand, Cas, why I can’t help. Prophets are protected, they’re guarded by heaven’s most deadly weapons, archangels. If any threat were to come near that prophet…”

 

Castiel moves forward, until he’s encroaching on the angel’s space, and can just smell the wind from every corner of the earth.

 

“And if a prophet…were in the same room as a demon?”

 

“Then heaven’s most destructive fire would rain down on that demon,” he says quietly. Green eyes cut to blue. “Just so you know why I can’t help.”

 

“Thank you,” Castiel breathes.

 

“For what?”

 

Xx

 

“Don’t make me do this,” Cas whispers, staring down the metal door.

 

Alistair was waiting, chained up and spread like a butterfly pinned.

 

Dean swallows, and they’re invading each other’s space again, feeding off the warmth, letting each other know that they are alive. They are here.

 

“I would give anything, Cas, _anything_.”

 

And Cas knows he’s telling the truth.

 

Hell rises up behind his eyes and the fire grips.

 

He succumbs

 

Xx

 

“Drink,” Cas says, shoving a beer bottle at the wayward angel.

 

Dean takes it as if it will explode in his hands, stares at the amber liquid like it’s holy oil and will trap him.

 

He drinks.

 

“You can’t keep doing this Dean, you can’t keep lying to yourself,” he says. “The angels aren’t on our side anymore.”

 

“They’re my brothers. They’re my family.”

 

“I know.”

 

Dean looks up, and Castiel has never seen him look so lost.

 

“Are you asking me to fall?”

 

“I’m asking you to jump.”

 

Xx

 

“Dean, pass me those jolly ranchers.”

 

“No, get off your ass.”

 

“I thought angels couldn’t curse?”

 

“You were fucking wrong.”

 

Gabriel grins, Dean throws his jolly ranchers, Castiel watches the time roll by.

 

It’s just another Thursday.

 

Xx

 

“It’s the trickster,” Joshua says one night, when the salt lines are laid and the wind is slow and soft off the backs of the mountains up north.

 

“No,” Dean says, grinning as he appears in the center of the warm lit room. “It’s Sam.”

 

Xx

 

Castiel wonders if this is what it might have looked like to someone else, when he and Gabe embraced after death, or near death, or hellhounds, or demons. When they held onto each other like they would dissolve if they didn’t. When they reached out and found the last remnants of their pasts inside the other’s skin and told themselves that it would be okay.

 

That’s how Dean hugs Sam.

 

Sam, whose hair is long and whose body is huge and muscled. Sam, who looks small inside Dean’s arms, like he had once been a few heads shorter with slight shoulders. Sam, who clings to his brother like the sun rests inside Dean’s chest.

 

Dean meets his eyes over Sam’s shoulder, glassy and burning with something Castiel understands, a language he speaks every time he follows Gabriel into the fray.

 

“Sam, this is Cas,” Dean says moments later, gesturing with wide sweeps of his hand. His grin might split his whole face in half.

 

“We’re acquainted. Sorry, by the way. For all the…”

 

“Trying to kill me?”  Castiel supplies helpfully.

 

“That,” Sam says, and a smile takes his face, and Cas can see why Dean loves him.

 

“Well, that’s all in the past now, right?” Dean asks brightly.

 

Xx

 

“Wrong.”

 

“Gabriel, come on, give him a chance,” Castiel pleads.

 

“No.”

 

“We need all the help we can get.”

 

“I agree. He’s not help,” Gabriel says flatly.

 

“Oh please, just because he went a little off the deep end--”

 

“He made me think you were dead for six months,” he hisses. “He made me track him across the country for _six months_ , and the bastard didn’t even have the decency to stay dead.”

 

“If it makes it any better, he was doing it out of a misplaced need to prepare you for my death, because he didn’t have anything to help him with the separation from Dean and it almost killed him.”

 

“It doesn’t.”

 

Xx

 

“Are they okay?” Dean whispers, flitting into existence with the rustle of wings.

 

Castiel glances back into the motel room, where Sam and Gabriel are invested in the only thing that seems to bring them together, hating on their brothers.

 

They discuss Dean’s annoying eating habits and Castiel’s sanctimonious big brother crap until they’re out of breath. They drink beer and take the piss and laugh and relearn how to breathe.

 

“They’re okay.”

 

Xx

 

“Dean?”

 

A breath of wings.

 

“Yeah?”

 

Castiel smiles.

 

Xx

 

“I think I believe for the sake of it, these days,” Dean says.

 

Castiel feels like there are wings trapped inside his chest. The night’s warm and soft against their skin, and they’re on the roof of the Impala again.

 

“But you know your Father’s real.”

 

“Do I?”

 

Xx

 

“Do you ever miss heaven?” Castiel asks, when they hit for the west coast running, horsemen spread out before their eyes.

 

“It comes and goes in waves,” Dean answers from the back, sweeping his eyes over a sleeping Gabriel. “I think Sam had it right all those years ago, though. Nothing quite like Earth. Nothing quite like humanity.”

 

Xx

 

“Am I a good person, Dean?”

 

Dean stares at him from the passenger seat, the road blurs before them.

 

“I fell for you, Cas, so I sure hope so.”

 

Xx

 

Castiel kisses him, when the wind dies down, when the stars are out, when the tips of his fingers tingle with the proximity to warm skin.

 

Castiel kisses him when his chest feels like it’s expanding beyond its borders, when his heartbeat syncs with an angels.

 

And Dean kisses back.

 

And it’s like his blood is singing, like every road has changed to a waterway that will carry them home, to the horizon. To the setting sun.

 

It’s the most natural thing he’s ever done.

 

It’s like worship, like prayer.

 

And it’s like none of that.

 

The moon warms their skin with soft twilight, and they find home.

 

Xx

 

“Oh my god, you’re beautiful,” Castiel whispers, tracing his fingers across Dean’s cheekbones.

 

“Blasphemy,” Dean whispers, his green eyes sparked alive and real.

 

The spaces between them are alight with the breath of wings and the sound of a new day breaking.

 

“I’m not like other humans.”


End file.
